Moments, Last Man Standing
by reniRCx
Summary: Team Minato, as they stand through tragedy and loss, destruction and perhaps even love. Mostly KakaRin, with a bit of unrequited ObiRin. An extensive take on how Kakashi acquired his Mangekyo Sharingan.


**A/N: I must say, I'm pretty proud of this fic. Unlike a lot of my other stuff, I feel like this is what fanfiction should be. I was constantly referring to the Naruto wiki for timeline stuff, and I think I managed to make that work out. Packed in here are some of my theories, and explanations, all in the form of a story.**

**Warnings: Tragedy, canon and presumably canon character death, suicide, and the barest hint of preslash that is completely insignificant to the rest of the story. Because I know some people like to be warned for two guys doing absolutely nothing together. **

Moments

During the Third Great Shinobi War, ninja teams tended to be more liquid than solid, because maintaining four-man squads with the proper roles was difficult when death abounded. Minato's team had disbanded after the loss of their kuniochi, and he'd been handed a hastily-formed team of genin, fresh out of the academy (rushed through, to boot; field training was starting at a much younger age these days). Not only was reassignment frequent, it also happened quickly, and teams were thrown together with no rhyme or reason. None of the higher-ups could actually verify who had thrown Minato on a squad with three genin not even qualified for B-rank missions. Obito was an Uchiha, which assigned him automatic potential, Rin was one of the brightest academy graduates in her year, and Taya…she kept up. Sometimes it was all Minato could ask of her.

However, it didn't take him long to learn that these were more than simple children. All of them had lost parents or brothers or friends in the wars. They were all intelligent, mature for their ages, and shared a drive to get better, get stronger, to _succeed _and not merely stay alive that Minato hadn't much seen in older ninjas. At first he was frequently pulled away on missions of his own, but eventually found himself wanting to be back home with his team, teaching and learning from them. He was as elated as they were after the team's joint promotion to chuunin, and on their first B-rank as a team, Taya was wounded to the point that Rin's field medical skills and delayed care at the Konoha Medical Center could save her to the point of staying alive, but any field work again would be an impossible dream. Rin and Obito stayed by him, and mere days after Taya was put out of commission, they gained Kakashi.

Haughty and initially cool, Kakashi had been working with another team that had simply been disbanded because of need in other areas. Solitary by nature and aloof on principle, he clashed with the kind-hearted Obito, who unlike Kakashi preferred following his heart over the rules. There was tension, and the drama of teenagers never ceased to amuse Minato, but the team worked together well enough where it was important.

The war dragged on. A mid-level team like they had become was commissioned for everything from simple deliveries to assassinations to important reconnaissance. The teams surrounding them were different from week to week, and as they grew more skilled, Rin was occasionally pulled away to work with a team or all medical-nin. It was those times that the fault lines between Kakashi and Obito appeared to deepen, without Rin and Minato filling the cracks together.

The day Obito started with his new team, he knew that it was going to be the beginning of the rest of his life. Finally. Finally, he would be able to go on real missions with a real team, learn to use the Sharingan and live up to the expectations of his clan.

Quickly, he learned that it wouldn't be so easy. His Uchiha skills were overpowered on their first mission and Obito was beaten half to death. The only plus in that humiliating and painful experience was that it was the first time he was able to truly look at Rin, and a love that would smolder over the next four years began.

The day he met Hatake Kakashi was another new beginning. With Kakashi's appearance into his life came an exhausting existence of constant irritation and hidden self-loathing. Kakashi was everything that Obito had never been. He was powerful of his own accord, always one to push himself further, to try harder. Obito had always had his clan to fall back on.

It was about a week after Kakashi first appeared that found Obito up just after six in the morning, letting dew seep into his sandals as he threw shruiken at trees. He made about half the throws on target, which his academy teacher would have told him was good but in his heart, he knew it wasn't good _enough. _

"What are you doing out here so early?" a sweet voice rang out, causing him to drop his current weapon and turn around. His face flushed and breath coming light and fast from the workout, he turned to face Rin.

"Training!" Obito answered proudly. The word was nowhere near foreign to his ears, but coming from his lips was a new occurrence. Training had always been something his older brother went out and did, something that had been dabbled in when he was at the academy, but to actually train of his own accord was a new one.

"Cool! Well, I'll leave you to it." Rin graced him with a shy smile and made as if to leave.

"Wait!" Obito said, walking towards her. He had her all to himself for a conversation; this wasn't a chance he would miss! "Why are you out so early?" he asked, for lack of anything more charming to say.

"I got back from a mission at about four yesterday afternoon and went straight to bed, so I'm up really early," she replied.

"What was your mission?" Obito asked.

"I'm not really supposed to tell…just same-old medical stuff for me but the circumstances…I can't tell you, sorry," she rambled.

"That's okay!" Obito responded, perhaps a bit too loudly. The conversation ground to a halt. _Stupid stupid stupid I should have something to say here…_

"So do you get up this early to train all the time?" Rin asked.

"No, I've never tried it before," Obito answered honestly.

"Then why?" Rin prompted.

"Because…" Obito dwindled off, realizing how stupid he was about to sound. Rin wouldn't understand why he hated Kakashi so much. She had probably never held onto such hatred in her life. "Because I want to surpass Kakashi so he'll stop making fun of me!"

Rin laughed gently. "You think that beating up a tree will help you defeat Kakashi? That's not a very good mindset to have. He's your teammate. I've barely met him, but he seems like the type of person who takes awhile to warm up to new people. I'm sure you two will be friends one day."

_One day. _Maybe, maybe not. Maybe Kakashi would get yanked away to another team and they'd get someone nice like Taya. "Thanks, Rin," Obito lied through his teeth, flashing a grateful smile.

From the day they met, Kakashi had fascinated Rin. How he could be so aloof and cool even after a mission that left the team exhausted to the point of speechlessness, remain calm and in order no matter what happened? Gradually, the fascination turned into something else…a desire to _unlock _him, to be the one to see through the barriers he raised. She began to accept that she loved him, but knew that she couldn't act on it.

Most ninjas don't know that medical ninjutsu is almost as much an art as it is a ninja trick. Nothing was always constant, you could never know how much chakra would be required for a particular procedure, and it required much more concentration. It was also a process based mostly on one's emotional investiture. You had to care about what you were doing, the opposite of how you were trained to think. So Rin kept her emotions hidden for as long as she could and _used _them when she needed to. A ninja's emotions could get them killed. A kuniochi's were intended to save lives.

So Rin was able to keep her emotions to herself right up until the day of that awful bridge mission, the day everything changed for the worse. For the first time, she couldn't be there for her teammate. Her role on the team went unfulfilled, and all because she had to be rescued in the first place. Devastating and tragic as it all was, she had nursed the tiniest flicker of hope that maybe all this would bring her and Kakashi together…but no. It wasn't in Kakashi's nature to let another person move toward his walls in a time of need, he just built them stronger. He grew more distant and would barely look Rin in the eye anymore. The team fell apart with Obito's death, as so many others had. Rin joined a field team of medics that didn't operate in specific squads and appreciated having a member skilled as her. Kakashi and Minato were whisked away yet again to other teams, never for long enough to be as close as Rin, Kakashi, Minato and Obito had become. After the war, even though things settled down, nothing much changed. Kakashi and Minato were household names, war heroes each by their own right. The city was rebuilt and ordinary citizens and shinobi alike tried to make sense of ordinary life again.

And that was the end of Team Minato. The story of how a death can destroy a friendship and partnership of two or more years, leaving its old inhabitants to face life alone. But even for ninjas, it's not so easy to forget two of the most painful and wonderful years of one's life, when one had friends they could rely on and believe in. The Nine Tails attack on Konoha and the tragedy of Minato's death solidified it. The team had been torn apart too many times to be anything anymore.

Kakashi was chosen for ANBU, the natural next step for someone so young and talented, where contact with friends or family was all but forbidden and certainly not encouraged. The concept was less difficult for Kakashi than it was for many others- no family to speak of, and no friends he couldn't ignore. For five years, he disappeared, his identity sealed off. Doing good, but in the name of the village, not himself. Five years went by without him speaking to Rin once. Then tragedy struck the village once again.

Three nights after the Uchica massacre, Kakashi made a side trip from a scheduled post-mission rendezvous with the Hokage. The compound was far from silent to trained ears, the wind ghosting through it to enunciate the emptiness.

Little Sasuke was still in the hospital, for no part of the village knew what to do with him when there was still blood on the streets of his home. Kakashi had been away for the attack, but filled in the next day by a fellow agent. Itachi Uchiha…so young to be an ANBU agent, but so talented and promising. The entire village had had high hopes for him. And then he had gone and done…this.

Rin couldn't help but visit the place on her way home that same night, painfully but irresistibly drawn to the tragedy. She had to see it for herself, yet another scar that the village would have to hold together through and endure. She had seen the survivor a few times, and wished for his sake that he would never have to wake up and be forced to understand the cruelty fate had put upon him.

It was impossible, of course, to have the word "Uchiha" flying through the village and not think about Obito, who she had never looked at deeply enough in the first place and by now had traced over everything she knew of him over and over, filling in gaps until her perception of him was like looking through shattered glass. If he had been alive…he would have died that night. Or not. Maybe Obito's strength of will and kindness and spirit within the clan would have changed everything.

Rin heard the faintest of noises from behind her and a chill ghosted its way up her spine, because of course her first thought was that Itachi Uchiha had returned. But all that was there was smooth clothes that blended with the night, an animal mask hiding all identifying marks save for a few tufts of white hair (Rin wondered how many knew that much of what the porcelain mask hid was just another mask). "Kakashi?" she asked, her voice coming out in a whisper. It seemed disrespectful to disturb this grotesque, somber place with words.

She almost allowed herself to hope that he would grant her a conversation. They might talk long into the night, about all that had changed and reminisce. Kakashi left without saying a word.

Suddenly, Kakashi was there again. Rin was still working with the field team and kept busy when they weren't on missions, but Kakashi appeared around the village more and more, performing missions as a village jonin. Rin watched him from afar, as much as she could while being able to truthfully deny that it was stalking. She watched him acquire a reputation for being enigmatic and solitary, looked up to by genin and respected by the village, while she stood on the sidelines, invisible.

It jointly amused and saddened her when it became apparent that Kakashi intended to fail all genin who had the misfortune to be tested by him. He had always been unwilling to commit- to places, to times, and especially to people.

As was the natural progression of things (it was a large village, not so large that two people who had once been so close could go the rest of their lives without seeing each other), Rin and Kakashi's stories found themselves interwoven yet again in the form of a dangerous but medically-based mission that required a haphazard, thrown-together team of jonin.

It was pure coincidence that Rin and Kakashi were placed on a watch together the first night in hostile territory. There _are _only a few ways one can create a group of two out of a group of four. They sat on opposite sides of a small fire, Kakashi reading and Rin looking off towards anything but him. For an hour, Rin tried to think of a way to begin a conversation, but both forced herself to acknowledge that there might be nothing left to say. Too much time had passed, too much distance…

Kakashi was reading a book, though Rin didn't know how he could manage it with this little light. "What are you reading?" she finally asked. A platonic conversation could do no harm.

"Icha Icha Paradise," Kakashi replied. Sensing that Rin a) had no idea what it was and b) didn't actually want to discuss his taste in literature, he added "It's written by Jiraiya, who was Minato's squad leader when he was a kid."

Rin smiled dryly. "Minato as a child. It's difficult to imagine. But then, there must be people out there who have trouble imagining you younger."

"Are there?" Kakashi asked, automatically diverting to his persona of not understanding people in the slightest. "It's probably for the best."

"Do you ever miss it?" asked Rin, moving a little closer to the fire so as to lessen the physical distance between them.

"Not really," Kakashi said smoothly, not even looking up from his book.

"That's a lie," she accused. She couldn't delude herself that she actually knew him, but this one was pretty damn obvious.

"Yes."

"Why are you so opposed to teaching? You've failed so many teams, it's becoming notorious," she combated out of fresh curiosity.

"I'll teach when a team comes along that I want to teach," Kakashi replied. He sounded like it made sense in his own mind.

"Well, what kind of team are you waiting for?" Rin asked, sensing that she already had a pretty clear idea.

"One with determination, goals. Not enough of these young genin really have goals, just dreams that are either diminutive or simply ludicrous. And the ability and desire to use teamwork to accomplish them," he specified, still looking at his book, but Rin realized that he must be paying more attention than he seemed to because he hadn't turned a page since they'd started talking.

"One like us," Rin summarized, her suspicions confirmed.

"If one ever comes along."

A year later, they did, and Rin watched with a gentle smile as Kakashi began to form a true bond with his new team. Rin had more than a sneaking suspicion that their ambition and teamwork wasn't the only reason he'd chosen this team- Minato's child, and Uchiha, and a female ninja who showed promise with medical jutsus. Simply looking at them gave Rin pangs of nostalgia, and she knew she didn't really understand Kakashi, but she couldn't even fathom how he could stand to interact with them every day when she sometimes had to turn away even watching them interact from afar.

Thirteen years today.

Rin knew that Kakashi would show up and was prepared to wait all day, if that was what it took. It had been too long, each of them with their own grief. Kakashi carried Obito's memory physically in his Sharingan eye, while Rin could only carry it in her heart, always battling down the guilt that she wasn't the one there when Obito had needed her most and always having to wonder what would have happened if she had ever had the chance to listen to his feelings for her.

"Come here often?" Kakashi started the conversation with a bright but painfully false attempt at a joke.

"You know at least as well as I do what day it is," Rin replied. Kakashi walked forward to stand next to her.

"He would make some sort of stupid joke like that," Kakashi commented, and then they fell silent. There were too many memories, too much heartbreak and awfulness to be summed up in simple words. They simply stood, and accepted, and gave each other space to mourn and remember.

Kakashi and Rin started spending time together, sporadically and sometimes uncomfortably, but it was healing. A person who understands was a gift each had been denying themselves for half a lifetime. Now they had times when they could talk, whether it was in joint sarcasm or amicable teasing, or for the occasional awkward few minutes, frighteningly in depth. Despite the ideas of coworkers and comrades, their friendship never metamorphosed into anything more than talks and understanding. But over time, as they grew closer than ever, Rin found herself wanting more.

Fifteen years today. This time, there was no plotting, no guessing games about the other's behavior. They went together, and walked around the monument several times in silence, examining shapes and imperfections in the design that they had both long ago memorized. As usual, it was an occasion for silence. Kakashi hadn't even brought a book with him, as he usually did in case he needed a prop to remain cool and aloof or merely to diffuse awkwardness.

It was almost magnetic- neither knew who began it. But one moment they were walking through the grass together, around the monument, and the next their hands were clasped together, their strides even. Kakashi had always been the furthest thing from a tactile person, but this, now, felt right.

When Rin had declared her feelings for Kakashi to him on that awful day, it was an instinctive reaction. She was impossibly full of guilt over what Kakashi had said about Obito and her, and frightened of meeting the same fate as Obito just had. Had she had time to process before Kakashi put himself in another life-threatening situation, she would never have said it. As it was, the fact that he knew had never helped to alleviate the pain of Obito's confession. But now, it had been long enough. She knew that Obito would want her happy. He would want Kakashi happy. And if they could give each other that…

"Tell him that I love him; I love him so much," a weak, dwindling voice rasped as Rin and several nurses tried to stop the bleeding in the chest of the man a squad had just brought in. The team had essentially dumped him on the medics' hands and went off to complete their mission.

"Love who?" Rin asked. Her hands were covered with his blood, and at this point knew that it was all but hopeless. But since she was young, if a situation wasn't truly hopeless she would do everything in her power to keep it from becoming so.

"A-aah-" Any word he may have been trying to say was cut off by a violent fit of coughing, blood coming out and melting into everything around him. He could no longer draw breath, and Rin was able to see his heart stop by the flow of blood ceasing to throb as it had before from his heartbeat.

"Does anyone know who he meant?" someone whispered. There was no response. They would never know.

It wasn't fair. That man, the one he loved, would never know. He would move on…maybe he didn't even know him. He would never do. He would live on, clueless. Kakashi had carried Obito's message to Rin. She should have been able to carry this man's. But she just wasn't good enough; she couldn't even keep him alive for the few seconds it would have taken him to say the name.

None of it was fair. Anytime she went near Kakashi was disrespecting Obito, and was more for her sake than Kakashi's in the first place. What was her presence doing for anyone anymore? That man today, she'd failed him twice. She couldn't save him, and wasn't even good enough for his legacy.

_Kakashi, I'm sorry. _That was all the slip of paper read. And it was Kakashi who found her, cold and surrounded by her own blood, the next day.

Rin hadn't shown up at work. Kakashi hadn't seen her in a few days, so after hearing that, he decided to go check on her himself. She was so responsible, but this could be a simple mistake.

What had really happened had never even crossed his mind. She wouldn't. He needed her. He needed her in his life.

He needed her too much.

Her eyes were open when he found her, dull and lifeless and he could do nothing but stare for almost a full minute to know that it was really her. Her skin was waxen, stiff and unmoving. The deep cuts on her wrists were only the source of the cakes of dried blood around her body.

Her eyes…that was the worst part. She had always been so warm and compassionate and reassuring, and it all shone through there. Just from her eyes, he could tell that she was gone.

Kakashi felt his knees hit the ground rather painfully, the world blurring around him. Not Rin. It couldn't be. Not _again. _He had never wanted to be the last one standing. Not this soon!

It was only then that his eye found the note. Placed on the table near Rin, even the fragment of paper hadn't been spared from blood, a single drop staining the corner while the words remained visible.

_Kakashi, I'm sorry. _

_Kakashi. _

It was his fault. He had driven her to this.

_Kakashi, I'm sorry. _

If he had spent more time with her, paid more attention, if he hadn't tried to be too aloof and too proud to see into her pain…

Guilt consumed him, and he gingerly picked up Rin's fragile, cold, porcelain hand, gripping it tighter when he realized his own was shaking. This was too much. This was the one loss he couldn't bare with. For everything else, Obito, Minato, the war, Kyuubi's attack…Rin had always been there, quietly suffering alongside him. They had always been in it together.

But now…he was the last one standing. If he had just tried harder to relate, looked a little deeper…long ago, he had established himself as _not _being that person. He didn't need to run to anyone with feelings, and other people could run to others while he stood on the sidelines. But Rin had needed _him. _And he hadn't even realized. Hadn't seen it.

His fault. The note had been addressed to him. Throughout their lives, they had been on the same side, in it together, together or apart, for better or for worse. But now, there was nothing.

There he was, the note that he would carry with him wherever he could for the rest of his life in one hand and Rin's cold, unfeeling hand resting in the other, when it happened.

At first, he mistook it for the appearance of tears- he hadn't shed a tear since before the death of his father. But it was only in his Sharingan eye. And no tears appeared. It was simply a surge of power, something changing.

He had developed a Mangekyo Sharingan. It would be months before he even dared trying to use it, and longer to master. Obito's Sharingan had been a gift, something to remember him by and to allow Obito to fight his battles alongside him. This, from Rin's death, meant nothing. She was gone, and the power he gained from it was worth nothing in comparison.

**A/N: So if anyone actually read this, a review would be lovely. Not that I'm expecting any, this is Naruto. lol. **


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